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BOS Ice-Tea – BEV The Vending Machine

The Brief:

Since launch, sampling has been key to the BOS Ice Tea marketing strategy. This innovative South African brand firmly believes that the product quality is such that a can in hand is the very best marketing tool to their disposal. Also since launch BOS Ice Tea has believed in a different approach to marketing, one that values entertainment and fun as a trade-off for receiving a marketing message.

Our brief was to come up with an innovative sampling mechanic that would put BOS Ice Tea a step ahead of the crowd and introduce it successfully to young urbanites, aged 20 – 35, LSM 8-10.

What we did:

We conceptualised and produced the first ever tweet-activated vending machine. Why? Well, we wanted to make the simple process of sampling one that would be memorable and entertaining. Also, we wanted to link the real life experience of tasting BOS Ice Tea into something that is immediately share-able via people’s social networks.

To do this, we got our hands onto a Bevmax 4-45 vending machine, and proceeded to showcase its inner-workings with microphones, cameras, lights and speakers through on-machine displays. Before we knew it, the machine took on a personality of its own and BEV The Incredible Vending Robot was born.

Originally designed to munch on tokens, we then integrated BEV with the Twitter API and now she now happily dispenses an ice cold BOS Ice Tea whenever a Twitter user requests one using the hashtag #BOSTWEET4T. And thanks to her nifty geo-location feature, BEV can even tell if the Tweeter is close enough to her to fetch their ice tea.